Music, recently

The first metal record I’ve bought since the late 80s. It’s mind-splittingly good, despite daft lyrics about cysquatches (either a sasquatch with one eye, or a cyclops with one squatch) and colonies of killer tree organisms who will attack you with intertexts from old Genesis albums. I discovered these guys from the fake cinema ad which introduces the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie For Theatres.

Rod Stewart, Classic Rod Stewart

Did you ever make fun of an artist your whole life and then realise that they were had actually once made some pretty impressive records? Happened to me with Rod about four years ago.

Yello, Stella

Hey is that still a dropout near the start of ‘Domingo’, isn’t this meant to be a remaster? I always thought that was just on the second-hand copy I bought on tape in Coffs Harbour the year I did my HSC. My parents hated all the tapes I insisted on playing on the car stereo on that holiday, except for this one, and I can kind of see their point now.

The Shortwave Set, Replica Sun Machine

Dreamy psychedelic pop with string orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks. Retro-futurismo stuff has been boring me since whenever that Air CD came out so I don’t know why I love this record so much, except maybe that ‘Now Til ’69’ has an outrageously catchy chorus.

This is a neat utility I discovered via Twitter which lets you pretend to ‘DJ’. You search for songs in an amorphous ‘somewhere’ – which I suppose consists of Russian mafia servers and the iTunes directories of folks with unsecured home wireless – and then Twitter the links, or cut and paste them into websites like I did with that Grace Jones track, which I forgot to mention is basically an apocalypse of soul.

I have to thank you for putting me on to The Shortwave Set. Have been listening to the album all weekend. Hence my frustration with the Pitchfork review. Ok, the album’s not especially original, but it works. I doubt I’ll still be listening to it in six months, possibly not even in one month, but sometimes transient bliss is ok by me.

The new Mastodon album, “Crack the Skye” is markedly different to their earlier stuff. More of a proggy, expansive feel, with more singing.

I’ve listened to Crack the Skye – a workmate bought it after hearing Blood Mountain – and, yeah, it’s a bit of a change. Hasn’t grabbed my attention the way BM did but I need to give it a few more listens.